Becky Beasley - American Letter - Laura Bartlett Gallery 2007
American Letter was published by Laura Bartlett Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Three Notable American Novellas, 23 November 2007 – 19 January 2008.
Beasley’s sculptures and photographs, as mute and minimal as they appear, unexpectedly open onto literary worlds: the screen behind which Bartleby sits; the coffin that a son constructs for his mother in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (1930); the Steinway abandoned by the frustrated pianist in Austrian playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard’s Der Untergeher (The Loser, 1983). In their respective novels, each signifies a construction that eventually becomes an obstruction to work. These imagined structures – emblems of impossible projects and the stubborn copyists (or artists) who undertake them – provide the models for Beasley’s art.
56p - EN - 21.5x28cm - softcover - Edition of 500 copies
Beasley’s sculptures and photographs, as mute and minimal as they appear, unexpectedly open onto literary worlds: the screen behind which Bartleby sits; the coffin that a son constructs for his mother in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (1930); the Steinway abandoned by the frustrated pianist in Austrian playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard’s Der Untergeher (The Loser, 1983). In their respective novels, each signifies a construction that eventually becomes an obstruction to work. These imagined structures – emblems of impossible projects and the stubborn copyists (or artists) who undertake them – provide the models for Beasley’s art.
56p - EN - 21.5x28cm - softcover - Edition of 500 copies